Teaching Strategies to Address Dysconscious Racism in the Classroom

Abstract

Introduction King (1991) defines dysconscious racism as a “consistent theme in racist thinking”. Based on such a definition, it becomes clear that dysconscious racism proves to be an issue of concern that teachers must make a subject of educational intervention. Since teaching involves considering a diverse population of learners incorporating those regarded as inferior and superior, teachers must express defined skills and understanding of dysconscious racism while engaging such learners. For such a reason, teachers must employ pedagogical strategies to enhance community building amongst such a population of learners. Employment of ideology, identity and indoctrination prove to be potential teaching concept that teachers must incorporate in their teaching practices to ensure students remain equipped with fundamentals of critical education and a view that defines their independent thoughts and actions at all times. White supremacy is a clear fact that defines the line between the whites and the blacks living within the American soils. Unfortunately, many learners, both whites and blacks, attribute the racial inequality that defines whites as superior to slavery that defines blacks' origin into American soil. The fact that whites brought the blacks into America as slaves make many learners believe that the blacks should remain as slaves in all aspects of life and allow the whites to enjoy the advantages and privileges associated with any bossy figure across the globe. Such reasoning spells out dysconscious racism that can be described as a misconception that leads to miseducation and uncritically accepted views that limit students from expressing their thoughts and ideas. Therefore, it remains imperative for teachers to ensure that they free the teacher-learners from such useless ideologies to become potential future teachers who can relate accordingly with a diverse population of learners without expressing any form of discriminative reasoning. With defined abilities to think critically about educational purposes and practice concerning social justice enhances acceptance of individual teacher-learners own identities as future teachers, as argued by (King 1991). Such a potential is well expressed in the “Dream Keepers" analysis (Ladson-Billings, 2009). In the article, Ladson-Billings (2009) argues that the dream keeper teachers express defined skill in dealing with a diverse population of learners which incorporated the privileged and the less privileged. To enhance harmony and respect amongst the whites and the black learners, the dream teacher employed pedagogical strategies that defined community building (Ladson-Billings, 2009). Such results define the need for a defined understanding of dysfunctional racism that limits learners thinking while defining their identities. This weakness is passed from one generation to the other. It is quite unfortunate that though slavery defines the origin of the blacks in the American soils, the benefits that this slavery contributed to the American economy tend to be ignored while defining the line between...